Star Wars’ newest installment shows the franchise still has plenty of life.

Star Wars is gearing up for its 50th anniversary next spring, and it finds itself in a unique situation. Lucasfilm has plenty of ways to keep the iconic franchise thriving — with numerous Skywalker-centric books on the horizon, the expansion of Star Wars: Unlimited, and even a crossover with Dungeons & Dragons. The gaps left by the sequel trilogy are being filled with new literature and comics, while Star Wars: Starfighter, featuring Ryan Gosling, Mia Goth, Amy Adams, and Matt Smith, is set to hit theaters next year with an original story.

However, the franchise’s most crucial medium — movies — has recently faced a significant hurdle. The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first theatrical Star Wars film in seven years, received lukewarm reviews and quickly fell off at the box office, breaking a long-standing trend of Star Wars films dominating the cinema landscape.

In contrast, one of the franchise’s smaller and more unconventional projects is receiving an overwhelmingly positive response. Star Wars: Visions Presents — The Ninth Jedi premiered on Disney Plus on August 5, and within days, the anime series garnered rave reviews, achieving a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. At a time when Star Wars seems to be searching for its direction, The Ninth Jedi may have provided a fresh perspective.

The Ninth Jedi is an eight-episode anime from Production I.G. that builds on one of the standout stories from the original season of Star Wars: Visions. The 2021 short introduced Lah Kara, the daughter of a lightsaber craftsman in a distant future where the Jedi are nearly extinct. A follow-up story, “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope,” appeared in Visions Volume 3 before Lucasfilm decided to expand the characters into a full series.

The new show follows Kara and Jedi Master Margrave Juro as they work to restore the Jedi Order while searching for Kara’s missing father, Lah Zhima. Throughout their journey, Kara and her allies traverse various worlds, recruiting potential Jedi and battling General Nawaam, a masked warlord whose growing army poses a threat to the galaxy.

Despite featuring familiar elements like lightsabers, Jedi, and Sith, none of this is part of the main Star Wars canon. Like the rest of Visions, The Ninth Jedi exists outside the continuity of the films and live-action Disney Plus series, granting its creators the freedom to reinterpret established concepts.

And they’ve fully embraced that freedom. The Ninth Jedi envisions lightsabers that change color based on their wielder and challenges the notion that a strong connection to the Force is necessary to be considered a Jedi. Supervising director Kenji Kamiyama expressed a desire to move beyond the rigid Light Side-Dark Side dichotomy that has long defined Star Wars.

“I felt the Jedi Order itself had become restrictive,” Kamiyama explained, noting that Kara was crafted to embody what “a new generation of Jedi should be.”

This creative choice is particularly intriguing at a time when much of Star Wars is looking to the past. Lucasfilm’s 50th-anniversary publishing plans include new tales featuring Luke, Leia, Han, Darth Vader, and Kylo Ren. In contrast, The Ninth Jedi essentially starts anew with fresh characters in an unfamiliar era, using its non-canon status to rethink some of the franchise’s oldest conventions.

So far, critics have warmly welcomed this creative freedom.

The Ninth Jedi debuted with a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes (though it has since dipped slightly to 95%), with reviewers consistently praising its animation, lightsaber duels, new characters, and its ability to tell a Star Wars story that doesn’t rely on the Skywalker saga.

This response starkly contrasts with The Mandalorian and Grogu, which currently holds a 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where even the consensus acknowledges its action but critiques its thin narrative and episodic format.

The positive reception of The Ninth Jedi doesn’t imply that Lucasfilm will abandon canon or start rewriting 50 years of Star Wars lore. However, the show’s success suggests that the franchise’s future could become significantly more intriguing when creators are given the freedom to move beyond established history.